Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the latest live-sction Disney flick, a retelling of the classic Cinderella, has to be on of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year. And, given it topped $US70 million over its first weekend, there’s no doubt it’s also going to be one of the biggest money-spinners.
Starring Lily James as the title character alongside Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as Price Charming, Helen Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother and Cate Blanchett (who, by most accounts, is the stand out performance) as the stepmother Lady Tremaine.
With the Australian premiere said and done and the film hitting cinemas nationally on 26th of March, we’re wondering what exactly are the critics saying about this belle of the box office and will it stand up to the many retellings of the classic tale? Watch the trailer and read the latest Cinderella reviews below…
The New York Observer’s Rex Reed gushes, “Let’s be honest. There is no denying the fact that this is the best Cinderella of them all.” Continuing to praise Blanchett, “the cherry on top of the cake [is] a sinister and captivating Blanchett as the first malevolent stepmother in history (thanks to the Weitz script) who is also totally three-diensional… schemeing sultry and secuctive, her Lady Tramaine shows why she’s disillusioned — widowed by two husbands while still young and left to raise a pair of dumb daughters she doesn’t even like, her resentment of Ella’s beauty and sweetness is only natural. And in the end, there’s a refreshing surprise.”
Blanchett gets all the praise in The Guardian’s Guy Lodge’s review too, “Blanchett is certainly the best thing in Branagh’s perky, pretty, lavender-scented cupcake of a fairy-tale adaptation.” Going on to comment that, “its go-getting villain is the only element of this irony-free interpretation that feels remotely revisionist…” and that “One might have expected the co-creator of American Pie to give Cinders a little more spunk, so to speak, but she’s relentlessly ingenuous, spouting her late mother’s Pollyanna-ish mantra — “Have courage and be kind” — at every given opportunity, and plenty of unpresented ones besides.”
The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane says, “At a time when that deconstructive urge is the norm, and in an area of fiction — the fairy tale — that has been trampled y critical theory, Branagh has delivered a construction project so solid, so naïve, and so rigorously stripped of irony that it borders on the heroic.”
He continues to praise the film for its impressive use of colour, it’s lush production design and its incredible costume design (including the hair!).
The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney says, “color, vibrancy and unabashedly romantic heart explode off the screen in Cinderella” and that, “Screenwriter Chris Weitz embraces both the magic and the humanity of the classic fairy tale.”
Cate Blanchett gets a special mention in Rooney’s review, being praised for her, “feline malevolence” and ability to “reinvigorate the textbook villainess both with her delicious cruelty and her gnawing resentment” in a “superb balancing act.”
Joe Morgenstern at The Wall Street Journal pronounced Cinderella, “for the most part beguilingly good, even though it’s no replacement for the studio’s 1950 animated classic.”
Director Kenneth Branagh is praised in Morgenstern’s review; “He has set a tone of lushly sustainable fantasy that’s often affecting, frequently witty, seldom cloying, nearly free of self-comment and entirely free of irony.” As is Lily James who is described as, “Impossibly lovely, be she cindered or begowned in cerulean splendor.”
Like many of the reviewers, Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips found the film, “refreshingly free of all snark,” going on to pronounce James a, “first-rate choice,… the rate young performer who can make consistent goodness interesting.”
This Cinderella retelling is just part of a major Disney revival. Frozen swept the world like nothing we’ve seen before, and the film company are making sure to cash in on it with a ‘Frozen Fever’ short being shown ahead of Cinderella to build anticipation around Frozen 2. Watch the trailer for the short (yes, basically a trailer for a trailer) here:
A live action retelling of Beauty and the Beast is also on the cards with Emma Watson announced as our Belle – this one hits cinemas next year, but has already got the media in a spin. And just in case you needed any further proof that Disney Princess fever is well and truly back not just with kids, but also adults, watch below as Cinderella (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Belle (Whitney Avalon) throw down in a Princess Rap Battle…
As they say, you know a pop culture epidemic has hit when you’ve got a rap battle themed around it.
